


Liebestraum

by AngstyDathomirians



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drabble Sequence, POV Oswald Cobblepot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 10:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19197118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngstyDathomirians/pseuds/AngstyDathomirians
Summary: Liebestraum - dream of loveAnd everyone wakes up from their dreams eventually.Or: Five times the dream ended, and the one time it might actually go on





	Liebestraum

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'ed
> 
> Gotham really out here attacking me with these Oswald Cobblepot feels two months after the show ends

1\. His mother was steady; deceptively strong hands leading him through crowded streets, a flickering candle when the electricity in their apartment went out, or ice that she used the last of her income to purchase and place against his sweaty skin during the sweltering days their air conditioning failed. Whatever his need, she was there.

He’d come home grimy and bruised, and she’d huff and clean him up and cook him a warm meal and then storm off to screech at his principal that if he didn’t put a stop to the bullies, she would. Nothing ever came of it (no one took the threats of a cook who still couldn’t correctly pronounce all her English seriously), and she pulled him out of school after school despite his insistence that he could take it. “It is not your job to ‘take it,’” she’d tell him severely. “It is mine to protect you.”

Eventually, he’d scraped through school, losing his mother’s accent along the way – more than reading and writing and arithmetic, he learned to stay quiet and unnoticed no matter what vitriol simmered on the tip of his tongue, learned when best to strike so his tormentors would never suspect him, learned to hide his ambitions and to savor small victories.

(Sometimes, though – sometimes, when they called his mother a slut, he couldn’t help but throw the first punch, even though they always beat the tar out of him afterwards.)

He wandered, during his youth, spending long hours scrounging the alleyways, taking work wherever he could find it. His mother would scold him for being out so late without so much as a call, and he’d sigh and explain that he was just trying to find more money, and she’d smile and forgive him and make him promise to let her know where he was, at all times.

(He waited until she bustled out of the room to fetch whatever present she’d made for him during her free time, then carefully washed the faint blood stains from his hands. She didn’t need to know that someone had jumped him and regretted it.)

They had to share a bed during the freezing nights their heating was on the fritz, and he’d wake sometimes and hear her crying. He’d asked why once, and she’d sobbed that she was sorry for waking him, only her boy was getting so big and he’d leave her soon, but he sensed that that wasn’t the whole truth. But he hadn’t pressed her, only silently let her cuddle him and stroke his hair until she fell back asleep and he listened to her quiet breathing and steady heartbeat.

Sometimes he wakes from these dreams – memories – and there is no steady heartbeat by his ear. Mother is gone, and he has no anchor.

 

2\. Fish Mooney found him when he was fifteen, and she was easily the strongest person he’d ever met.

Everyone in the area knew who she was, of course, knew her fearsome, no-nonsense reputation; but he hadn’t expected her to only be about ten years older than him.

“You’re from around here, aren’t you, boy?” she’d asked him coldly when her thugs dragged him before her.

“Yes – yes ma’am.” He bowed his head to appear smaller, submissive, but he did not cry.

“Then you know the rules about my club. No stealing.”

“Yes ma’am. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again –“

Her long fingers and sharp, painted nails lifted his chin until she could look into his eyes. He trembled, but did not look away, and intrigue glimmered in her dark gaze. “What’s your name, little bird?”

"Oswald – Oswald Kapelput. But most people call me Cobblepot.”

“I like you, Cobblepot. I can tell you’ve got spunk. How’d you like a job? Provided you don’t steal from me again.”

“Of course not, Ms. Mooney – I mean, yes! Thank you-“

She pressed a finger to his lips, and he didn’t think he was imagining the slight smile that played across her face. “Quit your babbling. There, one less rat on Gotham’s streets that needs to steal to survive. Go in the back with the boys; if you’re going to be seen around my establishment, the first thing you need is some new clothes.”

He carried her umbrella if it rained, which was more often than not; he had an eye for detail, and conducted some low-level bookkeeping for her less scrupulous activities. Hardly glamorous, but the glow in his skinny fifteen-year-old chest when he tried on his first suit and earned the money to buy Mother dresses was worth the more humiliating aspects of his employment. Fish still snapped at him and kicked him around a bit, but sometimes it was a “thank you, Oswald,” or a “that was pretty smart, boy, good thinking,” and his confidence swelled.

“Your name’s not really Fish, is it?” he’d gathered the courage to ask her once while they were dining.

She’d actually smiled at him a little, a real one. “No. It’s Maria.”

His nose wrinkled. “I like Maria better than Fish.”

“I don’t,” she growled, and he shut up. “Some of the dresses I had when I was a little girl were so rough they looked like scales. I worked in the back of a seafood restaurant. So some of the boys in my neighborhood called me their little fish.” She smirked. “I took that name and shoved it right back down their sneering faces.” He thought the fork in her hand would actually snap for a second.

She leaned back and cast a knowing, critical eye over him the way she sometimes did. “I suspect you’ll reach a similar epiphany yourself soon, Oswald.”

Fish just didn’t _notice_ some things, and she didn’t know how to be subtle. He’d seen her suffer for that before. But she was so self-assured that she didn’t bother learning from her oversights; whatever consequence resulted from it she believed she could handle, and she always did.

Sometimes he hated her for that, and sometimes he loved her, but he always vowed that one day he’d be just as strong and determined and confident as she was.

 

3\. Jim Gordon was not as honest or reliable as he had first hoped, perhaps, but at the very least, Jim was fascinating.

Predictable, in an odd way, but spontaneous at the same time. Often Oswald found his expectations delightfully subverted, even outright defied. It only ever happened around Jim, and while occasionally frustrating, it was just as much a joy to find someone that took work to puzzle out. Oswald had lost his greatest weapon in the face of Jim Gordon – Jim didn’t underestimate him, and Oswald almost felt like he could be himself around the only straight-laced cop in the city.

But there was always that little niggling voice that held him back from complete transparency, because as much as they worked together – Galavan, the Court, Jerome Valeska – Jim never seemed to grasp that Oswald was not an obstacle to peace and order in Gotham. So Oswald maintained that distance, even though he knew they were really on the same side, just as much as they were on opposite poles.

Unfortunately, when it came to Jim’s bursts of spontaneity, Oswald often received the raw end of the deal, leaving him smarting for days, sometimes even weeks, on end. But still, Jim was worth keeping around, because, when it came down to it, Jim could be trusted not to put a bullet in his skull.

When the judge read the sentence – ten years in Blackgate – Oswald almost, _almost,_ wished he had.

             

4\. His father was warm: warm words, warm embraces.

When they met, everything was a hazy, pleasurable glow, occasionally pierced by spears of grief or fear. He shrank from them, back to safety; back to ignorance, he scoffed at himself later. But as much as he hated Hugo Strange for reducing him to such a pitiful state, he could not truly regret it, because it had brought Father joy for the last days of his life.

(Sometimes – he does wonder if Father would have loved him if they had met when Oswald was truly himself. But such introspection was ultimately pointless; at least they’d had the time they did, however little Oswald could really remember of it.)

Father had fears of his own, but they didn’t consume him. His house was large and dark, but a soft, nurturing darkness, not cold and empty; a beacon in a frigid, uncaring world.

And just like the crackling fireplace in his house inevitably died, his father’s warmth went out.

The world was cold again, but at least it was clear.

 

5\. Martin was grounding.

Oswald was absolute king of Gotham. All his enemies were dead. (Or frozen.) The rich, intoxicating wine of victory had satisfied him as he established the Iceberg Lounge, but now that the symbol of his reign was up and running, inactivity ate away at his brain. He had spent so long clawing his way to the top, then defending it, then clawing back to it, and so on. He hadn’t realized how…listless it would feel with nothing and no one left to conquer, without someone to fight (or someone to care for. someone with which to share his bounty). 

(“I know your type, boy,” Fish had scoffed at him one day. “You don’t do well on your own.”)

He knew he was making hasty decisions, quick judgments, and inwardly reprimanded himself, but frankly, he was…bored. (Lonely, a recently-frozen part of him whispered.) Sofia Falcone presented an interesting challenge, but without having yet made an overt move against him he couldn’t direct all his energy towards outmaneuvering her. Besides, her company was…tolerable, in the meantime.

But the boy, Martin, he was fascinating. Clever, and curious without being bothersome. They weren’t friends, of course, but Martin was a project with enormous potential if properly guided.

And it wasn’t until Sofia Falcone had her perfect, painted nails wrapped around the boy’s thin shoulders beneath a bridge and an inky sky that he admitted to himself that he would submit all his hard-won victories, stay in Arkham’s cesspool forever, if it kept her from harming Martin. Any more than she already had, at least.

His empire he could always win back, but a life – that could never be restored.

             

+1 So when Ed Nygma came back in a whirlwind of neon green and sly smiles, Oswald knew he was worth everything: worth revenge on Sofia, worth swallowing his pride and actually paying Hugo Strange, worth even his own eye.

He hadn’t been able to save anyone else he loved – but Ed Nygma would die over Oswald’s own dead body. Probably not even then.

Ed felt like home.

At first it was because he sang Mother’s songs, and repeated her words. But then, after a bullet in his gut shattered that illusion, home simply became Ed himself; his obnoxious laughter, his delighted, confident grin when he’d had some breakthrough, the way he sniffed when he had to push his glasses back up his nose.

And his insistence on placing himself squarely in the middle of Oswald’s business.

“Would you hold still and let me look at it?!”

Oswald gritted his teeth. “It _hurts_. Can’t you give me something?!”

Ed’s jaw tightened. “I need you lucid for this. Maybe later.”

The bandage felt like it pulled away a layer of his skin with it, and it was all he could do to keep from screaming, gripping the armrest until his knuckles were white. Ed worked quickly in the dim light of the library, muttering apologies when Oswald flinched, but otherwise totally focused on his work, cleaning away dried blood, stitching and disinfecting the swollen area. The constant stabbing pain finally subsided as Ed applied a fresh bandage and covered the injury again.

“Ok, it’s not as bad as it looked at first. There were several lacerations, you’ll probably have some scarring in the area, but the eye itself isn’t too badly damaged. You might even recover your vision, at least a little.”

“And why exactly,” Oswald gasped, leaning away from him slightly, “did you need me lucid for that?”

Ed looked away uncomfortably. “I’m…I’m not an ophthalmologist, and in such a sensitive and complex area I could’ve actually caused more damage. I needed to gauge your reactions to make sure I wasn’t. You know. Destroying something vital.” His brown eyes were uncharacteristically guilty. “I promise I had no intentions of causing you unnecessary pain.”

“I know,” Oswald murmured as his breathing steadied. “I didn’t doubt that.”

Ed shifted on the stool beside the armchair, seemingly agitated again. Just before Oswald could ask him what was wrong, the words burst out of his friend as if he could no longer bear to hold them in: “Why did you _do_ that?!”

There was no need to ask what. “It wasn’t much of a choice, Ed.” His visible eye softened. “If it came down to you or me, it would always be you.”

“But _why_?”

Oswald smiled, a pained, weary thing, but no less sincere for it. “Because try as I might not to…I care about you, Ed. I meant what I said on the pier; I’m done letting _you_ weaken me. But weakening myself _for_ you? Gladly.”

Ed looked away, a familiar reaction whenever he was trying to process new information. “I don’t – I don’t see the difference.”

“There is one. I promise you that.” He leaned forward to meet his friend’s dark gaze. “Just as much as the difference between letting me leave and coming back for me, despite the risk.”

Embarrassment flinched across his features. “I suppose Nyssa al Ghul put an end to that story, huh?”

“Pretty much.” He paused. “Thank you, Ed.”

There was a brief silence, not uncomfortable, but Oswald could tell from the way Ed’s dark eyes darted around the dim room, as if searching for inspiration, that his companion had something more to say. For all his intelligence, Ed could be remarkably dim-witted and unobservant at times; but now, Oswald saw only a sharp surety in his face, a look he recognized from when Ed exposed Butch’s Red Hood dealings – when Ed knew something no one else did. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

“Why would you say that? Of course I do.”

“You’re not as…open as you used to be. You’re afraid to let me help you. I know you trust me not to betray you, but you still think I might hurt you.” He released a huff of short, bitter laughter before Oswald could respond. “I understand, of course.” His eyes flitted to the blackness halving Oswald’s vision. “I’m not sure I trust myself with that either.”

“Ed,” Oswald said softly, “I don’t blame you. Not for this, and not for what happened with Isabelle. I just need…time. Can you understand that?” _I’ve lost so much already. I couldn’t stand it if you left again._

“It’s Isabella,” Ed corrected with a tiny smirk, and and the words sounded more like a habit than any genuine ire.  “And…whatever you need. It’s the least I can do.”

**Author's Note:**

> *posts Gotham fanfic two months late with Starbucks*
> 
> Comment to save the author's life


End file.
